


first they have to catch you

by SapphoIsBurning



Series: bolt-holes and bullet holes [1]
Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Monster Hunters, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Bathing/Washing, Community: wrestlingkink, Cooking, Dean is a hunter, Food, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, M/M, Rabbits, References to Teen Wolf (TV), References to Watership Down, Scenting, Seth is a shifter, Surgery, Violence, Werewolf Mates, except only werewolves are a/b/o not humans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 17:14:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7276834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphoIsBurning/pseuds/SapphoIsBurning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Ambrose has turned his back on the hunter lifestyle and is hiding from the world in a cabin in the woods, when a wounded werewolf turns up on his doorstep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	first they have to catch you

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to the prompt [WWE- Ambrose/Rollins&orReigns: Hunter/prey, supernatural](https://wrestlingkink.dreamwidth.org/279.html?thread=365335#cmt365335).
> 
> There's a/b/o in this but it only applies to werewolves and it's pretty light-handed. I wrote most of it before Seth's return from injury (hence the Authority references), so just imagine skinny Seth, like Tyler Black skinny, and not the thicc Seth we have now.
> 
> A couple things are left out of the tags to avoid spoilers, but detailed warnings/summary of that stuff is in the end notes.

Dean moved silently through the woods, toeing carefully through the leaf litter and keeping his knees bent. He held his shotgun crooked in his arm, the shells loaded with rock salt and silver leaf, just in case. There had been some evidence of a big critter moving through here because some of his snares had been displaced or set off. The trip line was broken straight through and the rabbit snares had caught rabbits that had been eaten by something bigger.

He would assume it was just an ordinary coyote, but he had also seen tracks of something that looked too big to be any of the mundane critters that lived around here, and it lurched on two legs.

He didn’t want to hunt them anymore. He came to this cabin in the woods to get away from the hunter lifestyle, after it had taken so much from him. He had his life, most of his brain, and a body that still walked upright, and he wanted to keep it that way.

But if something from his previous life had followed him here...he was ready for it. A knife with a silver handle was sheathed at his belt, and a pouch of goopher dust was at hand if he had to slow anything bigger down.

He was not prepared for what he saw as he came around a knot of aspens with bright yellow crowns. A man, a young man, lay in the leaves beneath the trees, wearing tattered black clothes and clutching his knee. His face and hands were streaked with dirt and blood, and he looked terribly thin and weak.

“Fuck,” Dean said out loud. He cocked the gun, which startled the young man into attention. “Are you who took my fucking rabbits? Get off my property.”

“Please, don’t shoot,” the other man begged, reaching a trembling hand back to brush strands of curly dark hair out of his eyes. “I can’t. I can’t go back.”

“I don’t care where you go, as long as it’s not here.”

“Please, the silver...” the man said, wracked with some kind of a seizure. Suddenly, claws came out of his hands and his wispily bearded face distorted, his mouth falling open to reveal fangs. His limbs flailed wildly.

“God fucking dammit,” Dean said, coming closer and crouching down. He knew what he was looking at, and while he didn’t want to deal with it, he also couldn’t ignore his instincts to help someone in pain. A voice whispered inside his head that maybe he should put the bastard out of his misery, but Dean ignored that voice.

As suddenly as the shifting began, it stopped, and the creature was human again, but still. Dean felt down his body with his hands until he reached the right knee of the man’s black pants, soaked through with dried blood and warm to the touch from an infection and probably a foreign object or two.

Dean checked the safety, then slung his shotgun over his back.

“Hey, buddy, are you with me?” he asked, pulling some first aid items out of a pouch in the vest he wore.

The man whimpered quietly.

“It’s just your leg, right? Been what, two, three weeks? God.”

The man nodded.

“I’m gonna have to move you. We gotta get that leg taken care of, or else you’re going to lose it, and probably your damn life. How the hell did you get all the way out here with a wound like that? _I_ can smell it and I’m human.” While he talked, Dean wrapped a strip of bandages around the wounded leg and knee, trying his best to stabilize it. He secured it with two metal clips.

“Please,” said the man.

“This is going to hurt, but I don’t want to leave you here, and there’s no one else around for miles. You’re stuck with me. It’s about a mile back to my cabin.”

The wounded man gritted his teeth and nodded.

“You got a name?” Dean asked.

“Seth Rollins,” the man said. Dean hissed in a surprised breath, then hoisted him up and over his shoulder.

“Nice to finally meet you Seth,” Dean said. “Name’s Dean. I’ve heard all about you.”

“Oh God,” Seth said into Dean’s back. “I’m so sorry, please.”

“Nothing doing being sorry,” Dean said. “Sorry ain’t gonna bring nobody back.”

Then they were silent except for the huffing and puffing of Dean carrying the wounded man. He was tense but clung tightly to Dean’s body and didn’t struggle.

Dean walked past the markings on trees only he knew that led cryptically back to the cabin, but he probably could have found it blindfolded. He had made his way back there some pretty late nights. It was as much home as he had ever hoped for.

They made it back and Dean shouldered the door open, shielding Seth’s body from bumping into anything. He laid him down on a ratty, plaid couch in front of the fireplace, then put his gun in the rack near the door. It was a very full rack. Seth eyed it warily.

Dean stirred the coals with a poker. He put on two more logs and blew into the fireplace.

“I thought you would be older,” Seth said.

“If it ain’t the years, it’s the mileage,” Dean replied, going over to a small pump and sink in the small kitchen and drawing up some water. “I’m past my warranty.” He washed his hands and dried them. Then he filled up two jelly jars with more water from the pump, which squeaked as he worked it.

“Why are you helping me, after what our people did to each other?” Seth asked.

“People change,” Dean said. He walked back to the couch and handed Seth a glass. Seth eyed it cautiously.

“It’s a good well,” Dean assured him. “Clean water. Good air. Quiet.”

“Awful lot of guns in that rack for a clean, quiet cabin,” Seth said, but he took the water and gulped it down, spilling on his shirt but not even noticing.

“You’re dehydrated,” Dean said.

“To start,” Seth snorted.

“And you’ve been shot. And then abandoned. Even somebody with your...constitution can only last so long.”

Seth just nodded, grimacing.

“So you want to take those pants off for me, or am I going to have to cut them off?”

Seth shook his head. “I think they’re stuck to the wound anyway.”

“I can’t believe you haven’t hulked out of them yet, the way you’re hurt. Your folk always shift just about as soon as they can with an injury like this. Push the bullet out.” Dean was fishing for an answer.

“Can’t. Can’t control it. Silver…”

Dean bit his cheek and nodded. “Painful.”

“Very,” Seth said, widening his eyes.

“Silver, so you can’t heal or control your shift. In your knee, so you can’t walk.” Who was trying to kill this kid and why did they leave him on Dean’s front doorstep?

Dean finished his water and went to a shelf, pulling down a tackle box. He also grabbed an old gray blanket. He lifted Seth’s injured leg to spread the blanket underneath, then retrieved a pair of EMT shears from the box. Carefully, he cut up from the filthy hem of Seth’s pants leg all the way to the injury. He gingerly pulled the fabric away from the wound and felt it separate. More blood flowed into the fabric. He cut past the wound, over, and around, and pulled the cloth away. The entry wound at the front of the man’s knee was grisly and infected with god knew what.

“Don’t look, kid, look at anything but this.” Seth ignored him and looked down, then went even paler than he had been before.

Dean pulled on a pair of gloves from the kit, then retrieved a flashlight, a pair of pointed forceps in an autoclave envelope, and after some rummaging, a lozenge on a stick in a cellophane package with medical labeling.

“I’ve got to get that bullet out. I’m going to numb you as best I can but I have no idea how this stuff works on werewolves.”

“What is it?”

“Fentanyl lollipop. Military grade. Should knock you the fuck out.” Dean unwrapped it and handed it to Seth. “Don’t suck on it, hold it between your cheek and your gums.”

Seth looked at it, then shrugged, putting it in his mouth.

“Give it a minute to kick in,” Dean grunted. While waiting for Seth to start tripping balls, he ripped open a package of sterile swabs and some iodine and tried to clean the wound a bit. He could practically hear Seth gritting his teeth, and the other man’s breathing came faster.

“Dammit,” Seth swore, “aren’t you going to ask me any more questions?”

“Nope,” said Dean.

“You don’t care who shot me?”

“Not really. If they had silver bullets, they probably won’t be after me.” He put a piece of gauze over the wound to soak up some of the fluid oozing from it. “Also, why should I assume you know who shot you? People shoot each other all the time. Not my fucking business.” Dean ripped open the package containing the forceps.

“They...thought you would kill me soon as you saw me. Whoa.” Seth cut himself off mid-sentence and looked around him, seeming suddenly dazed.

“...and that’s the fentanyl. Great. Keep looking at the ceiling, kid. Lots of stuff going on up there.” Dean steeled himself and reached into the wound with the tools. This time, Seth was so suddenly far away he barely noticed.

Dean had hoped it would be straightforward, just an easy in and out. But he felt something solid, pulled it out, and saw it was only a piece of bullet that had shattered against one of Seth’s bones. A fragmented silver bullet, embedded in a werewolf. Not great news. But he went back in, taking his time to probe carefully, and pulled out two more pieces. Together they at least made up _most_ of a bullet. Hopefully not half of two bullets, he worried, as he tried to assemble the shards back together to see how much he found. Yep, most of one bullet.

He looked at Seth’s face. He looked like he was having an intense conversation with someone only he could hear, but he wasn’t paying any attention to the monster hunter field surgery going on mere feet away.

Dean picked up another package, a suture kit, and ripped it open. Blood was oozing more freely from the wound now, which hopefully would flush out some of the infection, but he’d need to close it up for now, hoping that in a few hours, Seth’s werewolf healing factor would kick in and take care of the rest. He sewed the wound shut gently, feeling guilty that he might be contributing to a gnarly scar that this young man would have forever. On the other hand, if he hadn’t intervened, the silver could have poisoned the whole leg, and then Seth’s heart if it wasn’t caught then. You can amputate a leg, but a heart...Dean shuddered to think of it. He had seen it happen once, as a younger man and a more callow hunter. His friends had said it was justified, keeping the shifter chained up and slowly dying, even as he called for help with no voice left. By the time Dean’s conscience got the better of him, it was too late. Dean had left Cincinnati after that.

He snapped back to the present. Seth was saying something. He had taken the lollipop out of his mouth to speak.

“I’m sorry about your friend.” Seth was sweating again. His eyes were wide.

Dean swallowed hard. “Sorry about your brother.”

“I tried to leave but they caught me. Punished me. You were supposed to finish me off.”

Dean grabbed more gauze and pressed it against the newly-closed wound. “Then the Authority doesn’t know me as well as they think. But they never fucking did, did they?” He pulled off his gloves, tucking one inside the other and turning them inside out to keep the blood on the inside, and grabbed the medical tape. He tore strips off and secured the gauze. Then he wrapped the whole thing up in another elastic bandage for good measure.

“Now all we can do is wait,” Dean said. He grabbed the soiled instruments and took them to clean in the sink.

The window over the kitchen sink looked out over a clearing. There were good sightlines, which calmed Dean, being able to see who was coming or going (nobody was ever coming but him, but still) but today, a jackrabbit hopped across the path.

“Look, dinner. Better go catch it.”

“No way,” Seth grunted.

“They’re fast little dirtbags,” Dean went on. “Gotta admire them for that, though.”

“If they catch you, they will kill you. But first, they have to catch you,” Seth said.

“Some kinda shifter motto?” Dean asked.

Seth laughed at that. “Definitely not. Just from a book. Got anything to read around here?”

“You’re supposed to be too fucked up from the fentanyl to be conscious.”

“I feel like I’m floating. S’nice. Read me a story.”

“Awfully demanding for a stray that showed up on my doorstep.”

“More like your back forty.”

“I’ve never been much of a reader,” Dean said cautiously as he dried his hands.

Seth leaned back on his elbows, trying to drag himself up to more of a sitting position. “Lone wolves die alone,” he grunted.

Dean dropped the rag he was using on the counter and turned around to stare down Seth. He tried, at least. The younger man was looking pathetic, dark circles under his deep brown eyes, hair matted, dirty, and still badly wounded. “What,” Dean said.

“Shifters don’t heal well on their own. We need our pack. Having pack around activates our healing factors, tells our bodies it’s safe to take time to get better. Otherwise it’s just fight or flight.”

Dean kept looking at him skeptically but came closer, pausing in front of a shelf. “The last person who lived here left a bunch of books but I’ve barely touched them. Used a couple for kindling. Tried to pick the boring ones.”

“Please,” Seth said groggily. He said that word a lot, Dean thought, as he grabbed something with a purple cover nearest to him.

“The Princess Bride,” Dean said, reading the title out loud. He strolled over and pulled up a wooden rocking chair to sit near Seth’s head. He stroked Seth’s hair once, absentmindedly, as he sat down and Seth leaned into the touch.

By the time that Dean had gotten five pages into the first chapter, Seth’s eyes were closed and his breathing had slowed to an easy rhythm. Dean set the book down on a crate that was serving as a side table, and threaded his fingers through Seth’s hair again, smoothing it out of his face.

The skinny, broken excuse for a werewolf asleep on his couch was going to have to come out of those nasty clothes sooner or later, especially since Dean had cut apart the leg of his pants, but that could wait. Dean went to the alcove of the cabin that served as his bedroom and grabbed a blue wool blanket off of his own bed. He carried it back to Seth and draped it over him, tucking it in around him as best he could. “Don’t bleed on my favorite blanket,” he scolded quietly.

“Won’t,” Seth murmured without opening his eyes. He rolled toward Dean. “Stay with me.”

“Not going anywhere, kid,” Dean said. He got up to stir the fire, and then he settled into his rocking chair. He lost track of time sitting there, watching the fire crack and pop, putting wood on or stirring it when needed. Seth fell back asleep, as far as Dean could tell.

Dean had never had another person inside his cabin since he bought it. He had left his truck hidden in a thick stand of bushes a few miles away and hiked back. Dean would have been happy to never have to drive it again. He was ready to die here. Not soon, but someday. He deserved to be here, alone with his thoughts and his ghosts. But he had never expected any of them to show up in the flesh and blood. No one was supposed to know he was anywhere near this place. So how did his enemies know to dump their black sheep here?

Dean stood up and went to the gun rack. Then he took a deep breath and sat back down in the rocker, rocking it back and forth, trying to focus on the movement and not the panic. He took a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. “They’ll find you and they’ll kill you, no matter what,” a voice deep in the back of Dean’s head said. “No one will ever forgive you. Even your friends are looking for you so they can kill you. You betrayed them by leaving.”

“No!” Dean nearly shouted.

Seth stirred.

“Shit, kid, sorry,” Dean stammered.

“Cold,” Seth said.

“You’ve got my best blanket,” Dean said. He got up and flipped the edge of the blue blanket up off of Seth’s leg to check it. The dressing was soaked through with blood. “Shit.” Dean folded the blanket back more neatly (the blood didn’t get on it, at least) and went to re-bandage the wound.

“Need pack,” Seth said weakly. “I’m so cold.”

Instead of re-bandaging the entire wound, Dean took the wrapping off the outside then put a thick layer of fresh gauze on top of the bloody squares. He taped it up as best he could and then rewrapped it, trying to wrap a roll of gauze tightly instead of an ace bandage. “Kid, you sure know how to bleed,” Dean said with worry.

Seth didn’t say anything, but he shivered and his teeth chattered. Dean grabbed Seth’s hand and felt it: it was ice cold. “Christ.” Dean felt Seth’s face: cold to the touch. “Dammit, you weren’t kidding.”

He tried to think quickly. He got up and got behind the couch, pushing it closer to the fire for now. But maybe Seth was right about body heat—werewolf had to know something about how werewolves work. Dean’s crowd never spent much time thinking about how to make werewolves bleed _less_ , to put it mildly. He tucked the blue blanket back of Seth and went into the bedroom.

The fireplace was built with the cabin sometime in the 50’s, but somebody who owned it more recently had put in a wood-burning stove in the sleeping alcove. Dean had it all set to be lit when he got around to it, but it hadn’t been that cold lately so he had made do falling asleep on the couch by the fireplace. With Seth getting worse, he thought more heat couldn’t hurt. He opened the door to the stove, seeing the crumpled paper, the kindling, the twigs, and the small pieces of cordwood he had stacked neatly, trying to calm his anxious brain by being prepared.

He grabbed a box of fireplace matches. He lit one and gently caught the paper on fire, lighting as much as he could with the unsteadiness of the flame at the end of the long wooden match. He shut the door and adjusted the vents. It was burning. He stopped and listened: no noise from Seth.

He sat down on the bed for a second, noticing that it was his hands that had been shaking, not the flame. He took a deep breath. He could handle one person. He could take care of one person without fucking it up. Dean rose.

The cabin was still except for the smoking embers of the logs in the fireplace and the crackle of the wood in the stove. Trees swayed outside the windows as the sun set; it would only get colder until morning save for what he could do with flame. But he had stacks on stacks of dry, seasoned firewood, a product of a well-honed ax and a lot of time to kill, and he could keep the two of them as warm as he needed.

“Seth,” Dean said, “I got another fire going.” He stopped to kick off his boots, padding across the wood floor and the scattered rugs in a pair of worn boot socks. “Maybe an actual bed will help.”

“They’re coming,” Seth said. He was pale.

“Nope,” said Dean.

“Watchers,” he murmured.

“Watch me carry you to the bed,” Dean replied. “Watch your bad knee.” Dean whipped off the blue blanket and wrapped it around himself like a cape. Then he scooped Seth up, seeing at least no new blood had leaked through the bandage, and he grabbed the gray blanket for good measure. Seth put his arms around Dean’s neck and leaned into his chest, pressing his face into his neck. The younger man was ice cold but something about the touch felt good. Maybe Dean was lonelier out here than he was willing to admit.

Seth was still trembling, still trying to keep his teeth from clacking together with the cold. Dean laid him down gently on top of the bed and thought bad thoughts about skin-to-skin contact. It was the fastest way to warm someone up, he remember another hunter teaching him. But it was also the fastest way to get another hunter in your sleeping bag. Dean took the blanket off himself and set it on the bed.

“What do you think about skin-to-skin contact?” Dean asked. “Can you even hear me?”

“M’fine,” Seth stammered out. “Please, I need it, I can’t…” He was wracked with shivers again and jarred his wounded leg. He howled in pain.

“Can you get your own shirt off at least?” Dean asked, reaching behind him to strip his off. He pulled it over his head and dropped it on a chair.

Seth just lay there staring at him.

“Here,” Dean said, kneeling on the bed and crawling forward. “These pants are ruined anyway, so might as well get them off. Your shirt I can wash.” He grabbed a pair of shears out of a drawer of a nearby dresser and came back over. Starting from the bottom of the good leg, he cut all the way up, then he cut up from the remaining edge of the wounded leg, trying not to accidentally cut off the wounded man’s underwear, if he was wearing any. God, he shouldn’t have thought that.

The shifter wasn’t wearing any fucking underwear. Dean swore under his breath and rolled his eyes.

But he wasn’t going to let his skepticism of a commando werewolf going commando on a commando mission stop him from helping this poor kid.

He walked over to the woodstove and adjusted the vents to heat the room as much as possible. Then he drew the curtains closed over the small window into the sleeping alcove. The room was dim, lit by the setting sun coming in through the kitchen windows and the glow of the fire. The silhouette of Seth’s lithe body was lit by the flickering orange light. Dean gulped.

“Seth, I’m going to crawl in behind you and put the blankets over us. We gotta get you warm, but if you want me to stop or go away, please, just tell me.” He leaned down to look the other man in the eye, brushing his hair back from his face. “Okay?”

“Kay,” said Seth weakly.

Dean crawled onto the bed behind Seth and scooped up all the blankets over the two of them. He scooted closer, breathing in Seth’s scent, rust and grassy sweat, and put his arms around the other man.

“I’m going to get your shirt off. We have to have as much skin-to-skin contact as we can.”

Seth giggled.

“Are you fucking laughing? You’re dying, take this seriously.” Dean angrily worked at the buttons of Seth’s shirt.

“I can do it,” Seth said and helped Dean get it undone. Seth wriggled out of it and Dean pulled it toward him until Seth really was laying there completely naked before him. The shirt fell to the wayside.

Dean felt a chill as he drew Seth closer; the other man was still ice cold, though the shivering had slowed. He wrapped his arms around him and held him closely. The cabin was quiet and dark was drawing over the woods.

And Seth...sighed. It was a small sound but it was the tug at the knot that was the tension between them. Seth’s body twitched a little and he kicked his good leg back, tangling it with Dean’s.

Dean felt good. Something felt right about holding this man he only knew by his family’s reputation. At this point, the day had been too long for him to bother feeling guilty about it. He hadn’t even gotten dinner.

He nestled his face in the crook of Seth’s neck, and Seth leaned backwards into that touch.

“This,” Seth said. He shuddered all over again, but Dean could already feel that he was getting warmer, warm enough that it felt delicious to lean into that warmth, to feel it flow between them.

“Thank fucking Christ,” Dean said, “I thought I was going to fucking lose you. S’long as you’re going to stay in my cabin, no fucking dying on me.” Dean held him close. “Why do I even care? How dare you come in here and make me care about you.”

Seth really laughed at that, starting with a stifled giggle and progressing into a full-on guffaw. “Mom always said I had a face like that, people just falling all over themselves to help me. Like a lost puppy.”

“You are literally a lost puppy with its leg stuck in a trap. Dammit. Why do you smell so good?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Seth said defensively.

“I smell like armpit and wood chips,” said Dean.

Seth stifled another laugh and Dean felt himself relax too. Dean’s fears kept him on edge even out here—there was so little room to let his guard down, he had told himself. But now he felt just the edge of that guard slipping, peeling back. Under the blankets in this pocket of warmth, he barely felt sleep coming to him until it was fully on and he was out, draped protectively over Seth Rollins, sleeping sounder than he had in years.

***

Dean woke up with a start, swiping at his face to rid it of the cobwebs and sleepy crust of the night, and he realized he was alone.

Had it all been a dream? Then how did his shirt get off, and why did the bed smell like the forest at night?

Someone limped around the corner into the sleeping alcove and Dean sat bolt upright. Seth Rollins raised his hands in sudden surrender. Dean noticed Seth had found a pair of Dean’s old long underwear and a sweatshirt.

“I had to pee!” Seth said cautiously. He lowered his hands.

Dean gasped for air and came back to himself. “Sorry,” he said. “Got startled.” Seth moved gingerly on his injured leg, but there was more color in his face and he was moving around on his own: a drastic improvement from the previous night.

Seth slid back into the bed from the opposite side of Dean, sliding under the covers and coming to sit next to him, leaning against the headboard. “I can’t believe I’m alive.”

Dean shrugged. “I’m a fucking good nurse. And a surgeon too. Patch you right up.”

Seth snorted.

“What?” Dean asked.

“I didn’t think coming to the bolt-hole of the most feared hunter in North America was a great way to get _fewer_ bullet holes in me,” Seth said, cocking one eyebrow.

“Neither did the Authority. But like I said yesterday, they don’t fucking know me.” Dean breathed in and got a whiff of Seth’s scent, like being outdoors under the moon at night in June and feeling the moss under you and the branches brush your face…

“Nobody’s taken this good care of me since...well it’s been a long time,” Seth said, snapping Dean out of his reverie. God, his stomach growled, he was so hungry.

Dean threw the covers off himself and stood up, grabbing a flannel shirt off the floor and pulling it on almost angrily. He was searching for anger that wasn’t there and finding only unattached, restless energy.

He lit the propane stove and put a kettle on to boil. There was some coffee in his stash of provisions and he could make some oatmeal. Maybe crack into the last stash of the bacon. He’d never had a guest stay the night before.

He thought back to his days with Roman, not even two shining years of travelling all around the country at the top of their game, so in demand they could turn down jobs if they wanted, though they never did. They made a name for themselves doing things no one else would, hunting down dogs wherever they would pay them to do it, and sometimes for free.

Dean had left Cincinnati behind but it had never left him, deep down inside, and he was vicious. Fatherless child, angry to the core, he found something in Roman, some approval maybe, and he wanted to please him. The root of their relationship was Dean’s need for approval and Roman’s willingness to give it, for a price.

But Roman was gone and as much as Dean punished himself, he wasn’t coming back. And Dean had woken up to what they really did and to whom. They were all the same underneath, all flesh and bone, no matter what the shape. Dean would never wash the blood off his hands. He stared down at them and paced back and forth in the small kitchen.

It seemed like it was barely a moment later that Seth was guiding him away from the stove and grabbing a dishrag, taking a boiling-over kettle off the burner and wincing, wagging a scalded hand despite how quickly it healed.

“Are you okay?” Seth asked.

Dean was still a little dazed. He regarded Seth’s bearded face, his eyebrows pulling together in concern. It was a kind face, and that realization struck Dean by surprise.

“I was going to make breakfast,” Dean said, looking down. “There’s some coffee. You should eat.” He rubbed his hand over his collarbone, feeling self-conscious.

Seth opened and closed cupboards before he found Dean’s stash of dry goods, pulling out a few things. “I can help.” He wasn’t moving very quickly on his busted-up knee, but he was moving at all, and Dean marveled at the improvement.

Before Dean knew it, there were empty packets everywhere and two steaming mugs on the table. Seth chattered as he worked. “I’m no fancy cook but I like to do it, even if it’s just assembling. I like taking care of people, you know?” Seth looked up at him.

“You’re hurt, I should be taking care of you.” Dean blushed a little saying that out loud, feeling weird about how much he wanted to do it.

Seth blew air out through his teeth. “Come on. You think I’m the only one who’s hurting here?”

Dean froze, but Seth blithely kept talking.

“I found hot chocolate in there too. I assume it’s ok if I drink it. Can I drink it? Was that your secret stash?”

“Drink it,” Dean said, unclenching a little. He sipped his own chipped mug.

The oatmeal was ready in another minute and then they ate quietly, too hungry to fit in many words around their breakfast.

Dean slurped his instant coffee down to the powdery residue on the bottom of the cup and then slammed it down, harder than he meant. “I need to go check some trap lines,” Dean said, standing up.

“I’ll come with you,” Seth said, standing quickly and then wobbling. Dean caught his arm to steady him.

“You smell like a predator, you’ll just scare everything away.”

“I can’t scare it away if it’s already caught in your trap.” Seth folded his arms.

“You’ll slow me down.” Dean grabbed some stray socks off the counter and started putting them on as he looked around for his boots.

“I can help. I want to help.”

Dean whipped around. “You want to help, help around here. Wash some dishes, kick shit around, scrub a floor, I don’t fucking know, just make yourself useful.” He shoved his feet into his boots, grabbed a rifle off the rack, and went out the door without looking back.

***

He returned to the cabin with a clearer head and two field-dressed rabbits strung up over his shoulder, along with some stuff he found out in the woods that Seth must have dropped in his stupor. He approached and saw that both doors were propped open and smoke was coming from the chimney.

Looking at the cabin from this angle, it looked cozy instead of neglected, like a place you would want to live rather than settle for when the rest of the world had run you off.

He wandered in through the open front door. Seth was drying some dishes, barefoot, his hair pulled back into a messy knot. Dean could still see a twig or two sticking out of it.

Seth saw what Dean was carrying and his eyes lit up. “There’s only one way to eat a brace of coneys,” he said, coming over and taking the carcasses from Dean with little protest.

“What?” Dean asked.

“Nevermind,” Seth said. “But I am going to cook dinner tonight, just watch. I found your pots and pans but your skillet really needs to be reseasoned. Do you have any bacon grease?”

Dean stared. “Uhh, fresh out, sorry. You did what?”

Seth bit his lip. “You told me to be useful so I started organizing things. And washing them. Thought about taking your rugs outside to beat the dust out of them but I didn’t have time before you got home. What do you do all day around here, anyway?”

“Mind my own business, mostly. Lately I started taking in strays but I’m regretting that now.” Dean pushed past Seth to the sink and grabbed a large pot. He pumped water into it and put it on the stove.

“Is that for the rabbits?” Seth asked.

“No, it’s for a fucking bath. I feel like I deserve one after being up to my elbows in your damn shifter blood last night.”

Seth paled. “Oh.” He handed the rabbits back to Dean and went out the door of the cabin without saying anything else.

Dean stared at the meat in his hands. Then he looked up at the now-closed door. He sighed, hung the meat on a hook, and headed back out.

Seth sat on a hewn log bench outside the door. His bad leg was extended in front of him and his good one was folded. He rested his chin on his knee.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned the blood.”

“I can’t do anything about it if you still think we’re dirty, like we’re going to fucking infect you. I just thought...you might be different.”

“I am! I just…” He blew out a breath. “I am sorry for what I said,” Dean said quietly. “It was wrong. I don’t talk to many people outside my own head these days.”

“Thanks,” Seth said quietly, but he didn’t look up.

“I can heat water for you to take a bath too if you want.”

“Where’s the tub?” Seth asked. “I actually looked.”

“There’s a cellar, I keep some stuff down there. Haven’t bothered to haul the tub out in a while, honestly. You know, only the best for company.” He smiled a little, and Seth looked up and smiled at that too.

Dean grabbed a flashlight and a key off of a hook and wandered out of the cabin to the exterior entrance to the root cellar. It was locked, not because anyone would bother him here, but to keep animals out. He forced the old padlock open and flipped the latch, then lifted the heavy door. He trudged down the stairs, careful to keep his balance, and shone the flashlight around. He saw stores of food, cans and boxes and some bags, but then he saw the battered metal tub. “What am I doing?” he thought to himself. Why was he going out of his way for this lost shifter, from the family that took away his best friend? He was just a kid, they both were, they were both lost, they were both confused.

He stopped to grab some more food to bring up and threw it in the tub. Then he hoisted it up onto his hip, climbed the stairs, and relocked the cellar. Seth wandered out of the cabin as Dean was turning around, and as he saw him Dean jumped, dropping the tub on the ground and spilling the contents. He dropped to one knee on the ground, catching his breath.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, are you okay?” Seth asked, rushing over and kneeling in front of Dean. He took Dean’s hand in his. “Just breathe.”

Dean was far away and his eyes were glassy. He shook his head, trying to clear it, trying to come back to where he actually was.

“I’m right here and everything’s okay,” Seth said.

“Nothing’s okay,” Dean grunted, standing but not letting go of Seth’s hand. “You shouldn’t be on that knee.”

“It feels so much better. You did a good job,” Seth said, sitting on his haunches and looking up at Dean.

“Still some silver shards in it. Not sure how those are going to work themselves out, if ever.”

Seth grimaced. “Full moon’s coming in a few days. I’ll have to shift then. We’ll see.” He stood.

It hadn’t dawned on Dean that Seth might be at his cabin during a full moon. Despite his extensive knowledge of hunter lore on the subject, he didn’t actually know what shifters... _did_ at this time of the month, other than it was something important.

Dean remembered something. “Hey, I found these while I was out—must have fallen out of your pockets while you were out of your mind or whatever.” Dean pulled a pair of blue gloves out of his back pocket and handed them to Seth.

Seth didn’t take them. “Those aren’t mine. Fuck, those aren’t mine! Who’s here? God, is he here? Dean, they’re still watching me!” Seth started breathing rapidly, hyperventilating.

“We both can’t panic at the same time, kid!” Dean snapped.

“I’m not a kid! I’m twenty nine!”

“...still younger than me.”

“It doesn’t matter, if they find me with you, they’ll kill both of us!”

“...so whose gloves are these?”

Seth took one and sniffed it. “I...have no idea. Don’t recognize the scent.”

“So they could be from some random-ass poacher in my woods.”

Seth thought for a minute. “....yes.” He breathed more evenly.

“Weren’t we trying to take a fucking bath? God, is the water boiling over?”

“Nah, it’s not even simmering yet.” Seth tapped his head. “Werewolf senses.”

“Uh-huh,” Dean said. “Werewolf all that food back into the tub and carry it in for me, will you?”

“You have pretty impressive food stores for somebody who claims to never leave the woods,” Seth said, gathering potatoes back into the tub.

“I mean I have a Jeep stashed out in the woods. I gotta get propane refills somehow.”

“Propane and propane accessories,” Seth said to himself, but Dean laughed. He bent over to help scoop things back into the tub, and they went back inside, trying to forget about the blue gloves for the moment.

Seth set the tub down and contemplated the stove. “How does this work, exactly? If we’re heating bathwater in all your big pots, then we can’t start the rabbit stew yet.”

Dean bit his cheek. “Well. You boil as much water as you can stand, then you dilute it to a livable temperature with cold. So once we do that, we can put the food on. Um, you should probably take the first bath. I don’t mind reusing the water.”

Seth gulped. “Thanks, but it’s your home, I mean...when in Rome, I guess?”

“Trust me,” Dean said.

“I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of that lately,” Seth replied, side-eyeing Dean.

“The hell is that supposed to mean? I saved your ass.”

“I know. That...doesn’t happen to me very much. I spent a lot of my life watching people falling all over themselves for my brother and on a good day, ignoring me.”

Dean froze where he was, faced away from Seth. Moving suddenly, he pounded the table. “I killed your brother, you killed my best friend, we shouldn’t be doing this. This is all wrong.”

“Okay, he may be dead to you but I didn’t fucking kill him,” Seth said, his face going pale.

“Someone did, from your family, I found Roman with his throat torn out and I ran. I thought you were coming for me too. I didn’t even get to put him in the ground. You just made him disappear.”

“Dean, he’s not gone.”

“Don’t get fucking werewolf-ghost woo with me—”

“No! Listen, Dean, he’s alive!” Seth grabbed Dean’s shoulders and forced him to look into his eyes.

“I saw him bleeding out.”

“From a werewolf bite,” Seth said softly. “From an alpha werewolf bite. He could have died, but the change took over probably a minute after you had seen him. Dean, he’s a shifter now and he works for my family.”

Dean’s eyes went glassy. “What.”

“Someone had to take over as muscle once Randy wasn’t around anymore. Your friend was feral for a long time before we took him in. Took him a long time to come back to himself.”

“Who. Who did that to him.”

“Who the fuck knows, at this point. Sounds like the kind of thing Randy would have done. Maybe it was some of his friends out for revenge.”

“How do I know it wasn’t you?” Dean said, weakly grasping at the collar of the shirt Seth was wearing, trying to be threatening but mostly whimpering.

“I’m not an alpha, Dean. Can you really not tell? Only alphas can change people.”

Dean rubbed his collarbone, curling into himself. “So what are you then?”

Seth gulped. “Omega.”

“I’ve heard things about omegas,” Dean said, looking up cautiously.

“Oh yeah, tell me what you’ve heard,” Seth shot back, folding his arms. “This should be fucking precious.”

“Back off! I heard you kept the pack together, like you were the real stable ones.”

Seth scoffed lightly but didn’t interrupt Dean.

“I know there’s Alphas, Betas, and Omegas, and Betas are like middle of the road shifters, like regular keep-to-yourself type, alphas are dangerous assholes, and omegas are like, Carmela Soprano.”

Seth looked at the ground. “Alphas _are_ assholes,” he said, agreeing with Dean.

“Know a few?” Dean asked.

“Hah,” Seth said. “God. God fucking dammit! You don’t even know, you have no fucking idea. You cut his head off and you still don’t know what you did.”

Dean’s heart sped up in his chest. He sank back down into a seat behind him and ran a hand through his hair.

Seth went on. “Randy Orton tortured me every single day from the moment I left my parents’ funeral to come be with my ‘new family’, my new mom and new dad and new horrible brother. He wasn’t even an orphan, his dad gave him up to the Authority hoping they’d raise him better than he could. Jesus.”

“Seth, I’m sorry, I didn’t....you’re right, I don’t know anything about your people, anything about your family. Randy was dangerous and hurt a lot of people.”

“You got that part right. He got started early on me. We’re shifters so we heal fast, and he would beat the shit out of me knowing he would get away with it—our folks would ignore the sounds of the fight and I’d be fine by dinnertime. Or morning. I slept in fear until I moved out of their house, and he still found ways to fuck with me. You were my hero, Dean. You did what I never had the courage to do. I cried. And when I saw you coming for me, when I thought I was dying—”

“You were actually dying,” Dean pointed out.

“Yeah, then. You know what all I could think of was? That you saved me once without even knowing it and you were here to save me again.”

“ _Now_ the water’s boiling.” Dean grabbed a couple rags off the table and walked over to the stove. He turned the burners off, then he grabbed the pot and carried it to the metal tub. “Watch out.” He poured it in, Seth backing up to avoid a scalding splash. Seth grabbed the other two pots off the stove barehanded and followed suit, dumping them in one by one.

Without saying any more, Dean went to the sink to pump more cold water into a pot. The physical action grounded him, helped him focus on the here and now and not the nauseated shock of realizing Roman might be alive.

“This is going to be a really awkward bath if you don’t talk to me,” Seth said. “Do we need to heat more water or is this good enough?” He looked at the meager level of hot water in the tub. “It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine!”

“Can’t wash your hair though,” Dean grunted.

Seth frowned. “I usually don’t anyway, but I think there are still some twigs in it from...um when my family tried to get me killed. By you. In the woods.”

“I could try to comb them out for you,” Dean said, carrying the full pot of cold water to the tub and dumping it in. “Test that, see if it’s too hot.”

“We still need to talk about Roman,” Seth said, dipping a hand in. He drew it back quickly. “Still pretty hot.”

Dean went back to the sink. “We don’t need to do anything. I need to have a cigarette. I am going to go sit on the porch and smoke. Soap’s under the sink. Come get me when you’re done.” He pumped water into the pot and then walked away from it. He and Seth looked at each other warily, then Dean walked on by him, grabbing a pouch off a shelf as he went.

He let the door swing shut behind him and left Seth to his own devices. He could stew in the pot himself for all he cared.

That wasn’t quite right. Those sad brown eyes cut into him, cut a piece of him out and he wanted it back.

He sat down on the roughly hewn log bench that sat next to what was ostensibly the front door of the cabin.

With shaking hands, Dean opened the bag and pulled out rolling papers and a bag of loose tobacco. He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. He opened the bag and inhaled the aroma. He’d rolled his own for a long time. He could do this in his sleep, right? He rolled a tiny piece of cardboard into a tip without dropping it. He pulled out a rolling paper from the slim box. He grabbed a pinch of tobacco and dropped it all over himself.

“Fuck,” he said. He saw his hands tremble. He dropped the tip and the paper. It blew away in the fall breeze.

He tried again. Roll the tip. Fold the paper. Hold it in one hand while you sprinkle in the tobacco with the other. Nudge the paper back and forth between your fingers, settling the tobacco in evenly. Tap the filter in. Bring down the edge of the paper so you can lick it. The orange vanilla of the wraps reminded Dean of Roman, sitting on the balcony of their shitty apartment in Cincinnati, rolling a joint and thinking about the future, whether they would hunt until they died or try to get out.

This time he rolled the cigarette into shape without dropping it. He put it in his mouth, letting it dangle from his lip as he fished in the bag for a lighter.

He took a puff and held it in, the sensation bringing him back to the present, only coughing once. He didn’t smoke very much these days unless he was having a very bad flashback or was very bored. There was less he needed to take the edge off, until his past had shown up to give him news, and headaches.

He stared out into the woods and smoked the cigarette down to the tip, flicking the ash off the edge of the porch. When it was nothing but a filter he smashed it against the edge of the bench and stood.

“Dean, where are the towels?” he heard Seth call. He turned and went back in, averting his gaze from where Seth sat naked, his knees drawn up to his chest.

“Forgot, they’re in a bin under the bed, let me get some.”

“Do you have a comb or a brush I can borrow?”

“...I did say that, didn’t I.” Dean kept his eyes on the floor and walked to the sleeping alcove, pushing the blankets aside to pull a plastic bin out from underneath the bed. He opened it and pulled out some worn beach towels advertising vacation destinations from up and down the west coast. He rummaged through the bottom of the bin for more things that the previous occupant had left behind until he felt the plastic prickle of a hairbrush.

“Here,” he said, looking away and handing a towel to Seth, who set it down next to him on the floor. Dean walked around the tub. “Still want me to try to get the twigs out?”

“If the offer’s still good.”

Dean didn’t say anything to that, just sat down behind Seth and got to work. He undid the bun Seth had put it up in (somehow, without a hair tie) and combed through it first with his fingers. He tried to pick out the biggest bits of debris without the brush. Seth sat patiently but Dean could hear his breathing hitch whenever he hit a hard snarl and had to pull. Then he started at the bottom, brushing the ends gently and working out the tangles. Seth’s hair was soft and well-cared for and Dean was halfway afraid it would catch on his rough hands, even though hair didn’t work that way. He tried not to let memories of hair slipping through his fingers overwhelm him as he worked.

“You have no idea how good this feels,” Seth said.

“No, I have a pretty good idea. Been with enough long-haired fellas...I don’t have anything to put in it,” Dean said as he worked all the way up to the top of Seth’s head, brushing from his hairline all the way down to the tips in smooth motions.

“S’okay,” Seth said in a blissed-out voice.

“I think I’m done. Want me to tie it back up?”

Seth sighed deeply. “No, just leave it.” He stood up out of the tub suddenly, grabbing the towel as he rose, but Dean couldn’t miss the curve of Seth’s ass and a glimpse of more of him than that before the towel went around his waist.

“Think the water’s still warm. Maybe. Kinda.”

“Eh, the cold would probably do me good,” Dean said, chewing on his cheek.

Seth stepped over to where he had left the clothes he was wearing. “There’s more stuff in the blue plastic dresser in the alcove,” Dean said. “Just...help yourself.”

“Thanks,” Seth said, walking away.

Dean stripped off his shirt over his head and dropped his jeans and underwear, realizing he hadn’t been out of them since yesterday. Stepping out of his shoes and socks, he got in the tub of water. It was warm-ish. Dean scooped some up with his hands and let it rain down over himself. He crouched, wetting as much of himself as he could, then tried to soap himself and rinse. He stood to full height just as Seth rounded the corner out of the other room, wearing Dean’s favorite fucking black denim shirt, which was old as shit and had to have been buried at the bottom of a pile, and as Dean was wondering where Seth found it, Seth looked up and got an eyeful of Dean.

Seth froze. “Um,” he said. “Werewolves are very comfortable around nudity, so you know.”

Dean rolled his eyes and reached down to rinse himself with more water. “You seem really comfortable right now.”

“I’m trying not to make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m fine.”

“Fine,” Seth said, “I’m going to cut up those rabbits and you’ll really see what you saved my life for, I promise, I’m an awesome cook.” He walked into the kitchen and went to the counter, rummaging loudly through a drawer for a knife and something to cut on.

Dean finished cleaning himself by running his wet hands through his hair and shaking it out. He grabbed the other towel and dried himself off, then wrapped it around himself.

“How’d you pick that shirt out, of all of the bullshit in there?” Dean asked.

“Um, sniff test mostly,” Seth said, looking over his shoulder and then looking quickly back at the carcass he was jointing.

“You sniff checked my laundry for cleanliness?”

“...sure, let’s call it that.”

“No, what is it?” He came up to Seth from behind.

“Werewolf senses, just leave it at that. My wolf thought it smelled good.” Seth turned and they were face to face.

“Your wolf?” Dean asked.

Seth laughed apologetically and looked down at their bare feet. “We talk about it like that. It’s like...a different part of you that pulls on you and wants to do things. Gets to be in charge on the full moon. You know. Like you do.”

Dean took a breath to start to say something, but as he did he thought he got a hint of whatever scent Seth was talking about, something like wood smoke and lumber. “City werewolves,” he said disdainfully, “everything out here smells like good. You think you’d just roll around in it.”

“How do you know I didn’t?” Seth said as Dean went back to dress himself.

***

Seth peeled and quartered potatoes with a very sharp, small knife Dean had dug up that didn’t really seem kitchen issue. Then he boned the rabbit and cut it into small pieces. He dredged the pieces in flour and put them into a pot to sear.

“How do you have garlic but not any onions?” he demanded.

“Vampires,” Dean said, whittling the end of a long stick with a crooked end.

“There’s no such thing as vampires,” Seth said neutrally.

Dean scoffed. “Sure. Your mom tell you that?”

Seth was silent.

“Thought so. Y’all are in denial. They’re chipping away at the shifter power base on the east coast. No time at all before they’re at your door.”

“I thought you were out of the business.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t like to talk shop anymore.”

Dean heard the rapid noise of something being chopped either very quickly or very angrily, and then the sizzle of it being dumped in a pot.

“You don’t have any wine laying around, do you?” Seth asked.

“Nope.”

“...brandy?”

“Who’s that.”

Seth grimaced. “Beer?”

“Might be some somewhere.”

“Where?”

Dean shrugged. “Dunno. Was saving it for a special occasion.”

“What’s more special than having someone cook for you?”

“Celebrating when you finally leave. When _are_ you leaving?” Dean snarked.

“Not sure where there is for me to go at this point. Desperate to get me out of your hair?” Seth replied.

“You just said you were going to use up all my beer.”

“One. Find me _one_ beer,” Seth said, throwing up his hands.

“Fine! Fine.” Dean put down his carving and went over to where Seth was standing, wedging himself between Seth and the counter, and opening an out-of-the-way cupboard. He pulled out two cans of PBR still attached to the plastic rings of a six-pack and waved the in Seth’s face.

Seth stepped back, but snatched the cans out of Dean’s hands. “Thank you.” He turned quickly on his recently injured knee, and suddenly it buckled under him, sending him falling backward toward the hot stove. Dean snatched him up into his arms in a second.

“Oww,” Seth said at the same time that Dean said, “You gotta be careful!” They were nearly nose to nose as Dean had his hands firmly around Seth’s body. They blinked at each other.

Seth tried to stand back up but kept an arm around Dean to steady himself. He tested the leg. It ached. “I think I’m okay, I just got off balance.” He pivoted on his better leg to reach the stove, and he stirred around the meat and the minced garlic with a wooden spoon. He put the spoon down to crack open one of the beers, handing the other back to Dean, who hadn’t left his side. Seth poured the beer into the pan, and while it sizzled and boiled he scraped the browned bits off the bottom of the pan to flavor the stew.

Dean looked on, trying not to look too impressed but happy with the way the meat smelled and also happy to be breaking into the real food stash and letting today’s MRE ration go uneaten.

“How often do you get supplies out here?” Seth asked.

“Every month or so I fire up the Jeep.”

“And you’ve been here...”

“I thought you knew all about me,” Dean said. “You heard of my fearsome reputation, the world’s greatest hunter that just up and disappeared one day, leaving his followers in the dust.”

Seth bit his lip and dumped some carrots into the stew pot along with some water. “Fff. Nobody ever tells me anything.”

“I stuck around for about a month after Roman...well. I mostly sat in a shitty hotel room in Washington State staring at my hands and ignoring my phone.” Dean stepped away, walking over to a kitchen chair and leaning against the back of it. “People all wanted to know what happened but I just couldn’t. They wanted to help me go get revenge and I turned them all down. They didn’t like that very much. After all we had done, seeing him like that, we all look the same on the inside, don’t we? He didn’t look any different than any of the bodies we’d laid out in the past, anybody we ditched in a shallow grave or salted and burned.”

The kitchen was silent save for the creaking of the stove and the water beginning to simmer.

“Been here two years,” Dean said.

Seth took a shaky breath. “Oh,” he said.

Dean went back to his carving.

Seth busied himself by seasoning the stew with whatever herbs and spices he could find and salting it well. He wanted to fuss over it but there was only so much that could be done in an off-the-grid cabin. After a point, he put the lid on and turned the heat down, letting it simmer.

A quiet tension hung over the cabin and Seth was afraid to disturb it. Dean was reabsorbed in his carving and soft sounds came from the work of his knife against the end of the long stick, shorn of bark.

The sun drooped low in the sky over the forest. It lit the cabin up gold and cast their shadows tall against the back wall. Seth wandered over to the bookshelf stocked with battered paperbacks. It was full of quick reads of the 1990’s, a lot of Michael Creighton and knock-offs, but on a bottom shelf there was a good chunk of Georgette Heyer, and he selected one at random. The couch was empty, and he curled up with the book, hoping to take advantage of the light.

Seth read and Dean whittled until they lost track of time, until the rich smell of dinner on the stove alerted even Dean to the fact that they should probably eat it soon. The sun was starting to go down.

Dean stood up. “Can we eat that or what?” He turned around to where Seth was sitting on the couch, lost in his book, his eyes faintly glowing yellow. A curl of brown hair had fallen down across his face but he ignored it for the sake of a book that had clearly drawn him in. “Seth.”

“Wha?” Seth looked up. His eyes seemed to flare briefly and then went back to their normal deep brown. Maybe it was just the sun.

“Dinner?” He walked over to the stove and lifted the lid with a towel. Steam billowed out and filled the cabin with an even more delicious scent.

“Didn’t set a timer,” Seth said. “Need to put the potatoes in then leave it for another twenty minutes or so.” He got up and joined Dean at the stove, grabbing the bowl of cut potatoes off the table and tipping them into the bubbling pot. He snatched the lid from Dean and put it back on the pot. “Got a watch?”

Dean pushed his sleeve up to reveal a battered timepiece. It was five o’clock already.

Seth moved to go back to the couch, and Dean followed him, grabbing the last beer off the table as he went. “How do you light this place at night without electricity?” Seth asked, looking up and around him. “I was too out of it yesterday to notice, and I conked out pretty early.”

“And slept in late,” Dean added. “Mostly battery powered stuff. Candles get used up so fast, you know? But I do have a stash of them in the cellar. LED shit works okay.” He walked over to the top of a bookshelf and reached up to turn on a small lamp, then turn it off, for demonstration.

Seth nodded and went back to the couch. Dean sat down at his feet. “What are you reading?”

“Romance novel,” Seth said.

“That what get your eyes all glowy?” Dean asked.

Seth glowed again, but this time it was the tips of his cheeks getting red over the top of his beard. “No.” He drew his knees up to his chest and sank down into the overlarge black shirt of Dean’s he was still wearing.

Dean moved closer into the space left. He cracked the beer and held it out to Seth. “I’ll split it if you want,” he said.

“Nah, you know werewolves and beer,” Seth said, waving him off.

Dean gave him a blank look.

“Werewolves can’t get drunk on it,” Seth said. “We don’t have the same reactions to alcohol as humans. You know that.”

A furrow appeared in Dean’s brow.

“Maybe you don’t know that.”

“I feel like I wasn’t so focused on learning a lot about y’all for a lot of my life.” Dean looked a little green.

“Do you want to now?” Seth asked.

“You just gonna lay out all your secrets for me, just like that?”

“Well. You already know we exist. You know how to….you know some things. Do you know what we do on the full moon?” The frizz of Seth’s hair was a golden halo around his head in the raking light of the sun.

“Other than all get together in one place?”

“We run. There’s a critical point where no one can stop themselves from just stripping down and shifting and running. What’s the happiest you’ve ever been?”

Dean took a long swig from the can of beer. “Dunno. Why?”

“It’s just, running under a moon is the most content and happy I’ve ever been. You should try it sometime.”

“Kid, if you don’t have a tail they frown on you running naked in the woods at night. Pretty suspicious.”

“Come on, you live in the middle of nowhere, how far are we from any other people?”

“Still probably wouldn’t risk it.” Dean checked his watch. Potatoes needed more time, probably, according to Seth, if he remembered right.

“Oh,” Seth said, sounding a little disappointed. “I’ll just go by myself, then.”

Dean remembered Seth mentioning the full moon was coming. “Huh, can you still do it if you’re by yourself?” he asked. “Can you do it, like, away from...pack?” Dean tried out the word. Pack. He felt uncomfortable, bordering on awful, saying the word, for whatever reason. He’d destroyed a few. Maybe Seth would forgive him. Why do I care, he thought to himself.

“Yeah. I mean, you always know your cousins are running somewhere under the same moon, right?”

“Right,” Dean said, thinking about the happiest he’d ever been, and the man he was with when he had felt that way.

Seth went back to his book and Dean picked at his cuticles, until Seth noticed and he felt suddenly self-conscious. Then Dean got up and paced around, finished his beer, went in the bedroom and tried to tidy up before it really was time to eat the freaking dinner Seth was so damn insistent on.

Seth turned off the heat and tested the potatoes with a fork: the broke easily to the touch. “Ehh, probably good enough. Do you have big bowls?” he asked.

“Nope. Gonna have to drink it out of, like, coffee mugs.” Seth looked horrified but then Dean laughed and pulled a couple of large, mismatched shallow bowls out of a cupboard.

He got out spoons and some kind of a squashed metal ladle too, and soon Seth was ladling steaming stew dotted with potatoes and carrots and something green he must have picked from outside at some point.

They sat at the tiny table.

“It’s probably too hot to eat yet,” Seth said.

“Then why did you dish it out? I wanna eat it,” Dean said, examining a spoonful.

“Just wait.” Seth spread his hands on the table and rubbed the wood. It might have been made right here by some rustic woodsman. Or it could have come from a catalog, who knew. “Who owned this before you? How did you find it?”

“You listen to the right channels there’s always people who got what you need.”

“Okay, now you’re doing cryptic hunter bullshit. What, did you get on the darkweb? Did you pay for this place in bitcoin?”

Dean pouted. “No.”

“Who had this sweet cabin in the woods to sell to a drifter with a lot of guns in his trunk?”

“Fine. Mick Foley.”

Seth’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

“He owed me a favor. Told him I needed to disappear, and gave him the cash I had, and he helped me out. It worked, for a while.”

“A while,” Seth said, blowing on a spoonful of stew. He tried it. “You can probably eat this now.”

“How’d your people find me?”

“Fuck if I know. Somebody probably spotted you in town, or someone scented you. Word gets out.”

“Word gets out,” Dean said, spearing a chunk of meat with a fork and wolfing it down. “Damn, this is fucking delicious,” he said with his mouth full. Seth beamed.

They were too consumed with eating to talk much more then, not having had much since a very late breakfast. Dean tried to remember the last time someone had cooked him dinner. It was probably the last time he and Roman had met up with other hunters at somebody’s hideaway back east. He always found himself cooking for Roman and whatever other crew showed up, but that time he had gotten to kick back and eat somebody’s momma’s spaghetti recipe.

This was better. Maybe he was hungrier, or maybe it was the circumstances, or maybe he just caught the most delicious rabbit in the fucking forest, who knew, but he was consumed.

He felt Seth watching him and looked up. Seth was smiling, biting his lip a bit.

“What are you looking at?” Dean rolled his shoulders unconsciously.

“Nothing.” Seth tilted his head.

“Liar.”

Seth rolled his eyes and spooned up more of his dinner.

Soon enough, they were staring down at empty bowls, and Dean was scraping the bottom of his.

“There’s more,” Seth said.

“Don’t want to waste what I’ve got,” said Dean, angling to get the last of the brown liquid from the bottom.

Seth huffed out a sigh and stood up from the table. He took his bowl over to the sink.

“Don’t you wash that dish,” Dean said, jumping up and taking his bowl and spoon and fork. “Jesus, you cooked.” He came around behind Seth, reaching past him to take what he was holding, and stood close at his side at the sink. “You can dry, though.”

Seth grabbed a dry towel as Dean stoppered the sink and pumped some water in. He wet a dishrag and swirled it around inside the bowls, dunking them, swirling, dunking, then handing them off to Seth. He swiped the spoons and forks under the water. As he handed them to Seth, their hands touched. Dean didn’t pull away. He lingered.

“Ain’t so bad having some company,” he said. “Could get used to it.”

Seth inhaled and shivered suddenly.

“What was that?” Dean asked, catching Seth’s hand.

“Nothing,” Seth said, trying to turn away.

“I smell bad?”

“You smell like me, from the bath, I smell like you from the clothes, I just can’t. Dean.” Seth looked at him with his big brown eyes. He stepped back, backtracking unsteadily until he hit a chair to sit on, and Dean immediately missed the contact.

“What,” Dean said flatly. “Not good enough for you?”

“No! Dean, my wolf thinks I’ve been on the goddamn best werewolf date I’ve ever had in my life and is screaming for me to bare my throat and seal the deal. All of this, everything you’ve given me is...it’s stuff people in my culture do for someone they really care about and _only_ for someone they really care about. Tending someone’s wounds, warming them with your body, hunting game for them, bathing them, grooming them? Save me werewolf Jesus, I know with my human brain you are not trying to mate me but with the moon so close, the wolf is about to take over.”

“And what happens when the wolf takes over?”

“I stop letting human bullshit get in the way of what I want.”

“And what do you want?”

“I want you, Dean, god I want you.” Sweat beaded on Seth’s forehead even though the night was cool.

Dean looked down at his hands. “I’m broken, I’m crazy in the head and I don’t even know the truth about what’s been going on around me for...forever. But what if I want you too?”

Seth’s eyes blazed gold. “You can fucking have me.” He stood up from the table. “So come and get me.” He turned his back to Dean and walked to the bed, pausing once to look longingly over his shoulder.

Dean blinked twice, then followed, knocking over a chair and startling himself. He shook it off.

He moved quickly to catch the other man, grabbing his arm from behind and pulling him around in a whip-style motion. Seth braced himself against Dean’s arms. His eyes were still glowing.

“I don’t want to be alone anymore,” Dean said, his voice breaking. “It didn’t help. I was just...punishing myself.”

“You’re a good man under all that, Dean. You need to forgive yourself.”

Dean could see a hint of fang showing under Seth’s lips and a thrill went through him. He pulled Seth closer. Throwing caution to the wind, he licked a stripe up Seth’s neck, at the edge of his beard, stopping just under his ear.

Seth shivered all over and bared his neck further. “Just like that,” he said, “and don’t stop.”

Dean kept licking and nuzzling, feeling little broken moans coming from his own throat, and he ground his pelvis against Seth. He could feel how hard the other man was. It had been so long since he had felt anything like this. A burning ecstasy filled him, pouring from the center of his chest and making him feel like he was made of light, or fire. “Is it always like this,” he whispered in Seth’s ear.

“It’s never been like this before,” Seth replied. “I’ve heard when you find your...uh.” He stopped in mid-sentence. “I’ve heard it’s like this when you’re with someone special.”

“I’m nothing special,” Dean said, getting Seth’s wrists in his and pushing him backwards, pinning him down to the bed.

“You have no idea, Dean, you’re everything, I only, I want it all,” Seth moaned as Dean kissed a trail down from his neck, over his shoulder, and down the center of his chest. Dean pressed toothy biting kisses across Seth’s solar plexus, down to his navel, and along the light trail of hair below. He paused at the waistband of the sweats Seth was wearing. He could see Seth’s cock outlined against them, a light spot of wet near the head.

“I don’t have much to give.” Dean sat back, contemplating the man before him.

“You’ve given me so much already,” Seth breathed. He propped himself up on his elbows to look up at Dean. “Don’t stop now.” He rolled to his knees and moved to be face to face with Dean. Gently, he cradled the back of Dean’s head in his hand and brought him in for a kiss. Seth just rested his closed lips against Dean’s for a long moment. Their foreheads touched. And then Dean exhaled and Seth opened into him, their lips locking. Their teeth bumped together and they laughed, startled, but kept kissing. Dean’s arms wrapped around Seth, pulling him forward so that he was straddling Dean’s lap. Dean’s slightly chapped lips brushed up against Seth and his beard pressed into Dean’s face.

Dean unbuttoned his favorite shirt to get it off of Seth. Seth yanked at what Dean was wearing and popped the buttons off.

“Hey, hey!” Dean said.

“Sorry, werewolf strength,” Seth said. “I’ll buy you a new one, don’t stop.”

They kicked off their pants and underwear and Seth reached toward Dean with a clawed hand. They both stared down at the hand, and Seth jerked it back.

“Sorry. I. Sorry.” He shook his head. “Do you know anything else about omegas?”

“...nothing that I didn’t see in some weird porno once. Thought it was fake.”

Seth’s eyes widened a fraction. “What did you see?”

Dean squinted at Seth and wiped his sweaty palms on the bed. “Guy got...wet. Other guy fucked him. Got even weirder after that.”

Seth made an uncomfortable expression. “Not so fake.”

“So you—” Dean cut himself off. He gazed at Seth’s body with awe.

“I am. I do.” Seth took Dean’s hand and guided it toward his entrance, which was warm and wet. It fluttered at the touch of Dean’s fingers. He drew them back and brought them to his face. He licked them, tasting sex and sweat and something unfamiliar that had to be shifter. Seth lay back on the bed. Dean crawled forward and touched Seth again, slipping a finger gently into his tight wetness. Seth stifled a moan.

“Let it out, let me hear you,” Dean growled. He crooked the finger, fucking back and forth inside of Seth.  And Seth keened.

“Please,” he begged, “please, more.”

Dean slid another finger in, then another. He marveled at the body of the man in front of him.

It was Seth’s turn to growl, but it was animalistic and short. He yipped like the coyotes Dean remembered from his time in the desert.

Dean withdrew his hand and leaned down to kiss Seth with short, fierce, biting sucks from his shoulder to his mouth. “I want to fuck you, Christ, why do I want to fuck you?”

“I’d blame werewolf brain but you don’t have that problem,” Seth panted.

“I’m going to fuck you now, just like this.”

“Yes,” Seth gasped.

“Anything else I need to know to ride this out?”

“I’m immune to human diseases. And you’re going to love the ending.”

Dean grabbed Seth under the knee, positioning their bodies in the dwindling light, and he drove in, spearing Seth’s soft, wet asshole on his bare cock. Seth howled, clutching at Dean and clawing his back with human fingers, tears streaming from his eyes. Dean rolled his hips, thrusting again and again, penetrating Seth until their bodies were fully entwined, then retreating just to attack again.

“Say my name,” Dean said, grabbing Seth by the hair and curling his fingers into a fist.

“Dean,” the other man moaned.

Dean tugged at Seth’s hair. “Louder.”

“Dean!” Seth yelled. “Dean, Dean Ambrose, fuck me harder, god!” Seth’s shouts echoed in the cabin and permeated the forest around them. The whole forest was witness to their lovemaking, because who bothers to close the window shade in the deep dark?

At Seth’s urging, Dean increased his speed, pinning Seth back to the bed and hammering him, making the bed shake and rattle against the cabin wall. Seth’s wet slickness made the bedsheets wet underneath them and the wetness spread the harder Dean fucked him.

Then Dean let go and Seth’s curls slid through his fingers. He drew back a fraction to be able to look Seth in the eye. He saw Seth’s eyes glow a roiling amber color, flashing like heat lightning, through the curtain of his dark eyelashes.

Dean swallowed hard, feeling frozen to the spot by Seth’s gaze, until Seth blinked and shook his head, coughing, catching his breath. Dean took a deep breath too, and ran his hand up and down Seth’s flank, up over his pec, caressed his shoulder, his neck, the back of his head.

“Let me,” Seth started to say, moving his body, but didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. Dean withdrew all the way, and Seth turned over onto his stomach, crawling up onto his hand and knees and grabbing a hold of the headboard.

“This way,” he sighed.

“I didn’t want to assume nothing,” Dean said, running a hand through his own hair.

Seth just panted, sounding like he was trying to keep control of himself.

Dean got on his knees and positioned himself over Seth, rutting into the crack of his ass before fucking him again, the change in position allowing him to penetrate more deeply, more completely. Something about it felt _right_ , like the two of them had been circling each other for a long time before finally coming together in an explosive collision. The slap of flesh on flesh was backed by the rustling of the trees and the whistle and moan of the wind.

Dean felt his orgasm coming like a thunderstorm on the horizon, like something he could see before it arrived. “Seth,” he said, “I’m close. God, you’re so good, baby, just like this.”

Seth howled wordlessly and Dean felt Seth’s body clench around him, tight and rolling, like nothing he had ever felt with a partner before. He dug his nails into the shifter’s body, and Seth arched his back, then dropped his head down. He let out a sudden howl as he came, painting the sheets with his come. Dean felt himself pulled over the edge by Seth’s tight body, and he spilled into the other man, feeling like Seth was dragging it out of him. It went on and on.

When Dean felt his body stop clenching and trembling inside of Seth, he went limp and his hand went to his groin to pull out, gently. He found he could not, that Seth’s body was holding him tight inside.

“Stay,” Seth moaned. “We’re tied. It can happen without a knot. Oh, please, stay with me.”

“See what you mean about the big finish,” Dean said into his ear.

Seth rolled toward Dean, leaning into his body, and Dean wrapped his arms around him. On instinct, he nuzzled Seth’s neck, catching the musky scent of sweat and sex on his new lover’s body. They fell asleep like that, Seth sated to the point of delirium, Dean baffled but also somehow content in a way he had never felt before.

***

Dean woke up with the sun on his face streaming through the windows. They had separated in their sleep, and now Dean was on his back with Seth curled up on his chest and draped over him. He felt content and groundless, like he had found something he never knew he was missing. He pressed his nose to the top of Seth’s head and breathed in his scent. Seth stirred under his touch.

“Hey,” Dean rasped.

Seth yawned and stretched, and where he was and who he was with seemed to dawn on him slowly. He felt tense against Dean but didn’t pull away.

“Hey,” Seth said, turning his face into Dean’s chest. He absentmindedly rubbed his cheek against Dean’s body, and Dean didn’t mind it at all even though Seth’s beard scratched his skin.

Dean rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and looked at his wrist. “Geez, we slept in again.”

Seth murmured noncommittally. Dean stroked at his hair.

“Last night,” Dean started. Then he stopped. He wasn’t sure what he had to say about last night. That it was amazing, like something he had never even imagined? That he felt emotional even just thinking about it? That he wanted to hold onto this man, this magical creature, forever, having been with him scant days.

Seth took a deep breath in through his nose and blew it out. Then he sat up, still glued to Dean’s side but not using him as a pillow anymore.

“My...people. My family. They say that when you meet your mate, you’ll know them instantly.”

“Mate?” Dean asked.

Seth swallowed hard. “Mate. Soulmate. Somebody you can’t not love, the one who’s gonna be the other half of your heart. I’m saying this all wrong, dammit.” He hung his head and his curls draped over his face.

Dean sat up too, slinging an arm around Seth and pulling him closer. “No. There’s something there. Or here. It just feels so right. Why does it feel so right?” His eyes pleaded with Seth.

“Because it is right,” Seth said seriously. “It has to be.”

Dean shook his head and nervously rubbed at his collarbone, which always ached when he got anxious, an old break from his first years hunting that probably never got the attention it should have.

“I gotta piss,” Dean said suddenly, standing up. Seth laughed and collapsed into the empty space left in the bed, grabbing for some piece of discarded clothing from their night and curling up against it. It was the black shirt of Dean’s that Seth had been wearing last night.

“What’s with you and that shirt?” Dean asked.

“Smells like you,” Seth said, curling up against it and hooking a leg over a pile of blankets.

Dean tugged on a pair of jeans and shoved his feet into his boots to walk outside. He forewent the outhouse to get some air and walk out into the woods, feeling the coolness of the late morning evaporating and condensing under the trees. He unzipped, pissed against a tree, shook off, and heard some movement behind him. Zipping up, he turned around. “Seth?” he asked. “You follow me out here?”

“Not quite,” another voice said. A man with long brown hair falling in his eyes stepped out of the trees, decked out in a bulletproof vest and camouflage gear and he pointed a high-gauge handgun at Dean. He had a rifle slung over his back and another handgun in a holster. There was a knife at his belt alongside pouches of god knows what and enough specialized ammunition to choke a chupacabra.

“AJ,” Dean said flatly. “Long time.”

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” the man asked, cocking his head with mocking coyness. “Or do you already have company.”

“Why are you here?”

“Funny thing, Ambrose, I could ask you the same question.”

Dean scowled. “I live here. What’s your excuse.”

“Dean, I wanted to bring you back into the fold. The world needs more people like you. These kids today don’t have the drive like we do. Like you did. I just wanted to talk.” He flicked the safety off of his gun. “But I took a peek in your window, Dean. I always thought you were some kind of faggot, but this is just fucking special, isn’t it? Are you out here banging shifter mutts in your little fuckhole in the woods?”

Dean put his hands up and stepped backward. “Don’t do this, AJ.” His heart raced.

“Put your hands over your head and walk toward the cabin. I wanna meet your friend.”

Dean didn’t have anything else to do but comply. AJ was armed to the teeth. Dean had a tiny knife in his boot like always but he couldn’t get to it without getting a bullet from AJ put in a body part he would surely miss.

So Dean kept him talking.

“Not sure my friend wants to meet you.”

“I know who that is, too,” AJ snarled. “It’s Seth Rollins. He’s supposed to be dead, you know. Pretty fucking surprised to see he’s holed up here, that you’re protecting him. Sticking your dick in him.” AJ shuddered.

“Jesus, were you watching?”

“I’ve been staking you out. Last night you had the windows open. I could hear him screaming your damn name, Dean, a fucking omega bitch.”

Dean spun around. “You don’t even know what that means, fuck you.” His eyes blazed with anger, not supernatural, purely human.

“I’ll kill you where you stand,” AJ spat. “Or you can help me make things right and we can put that bitch in the ground. Monsters don’t deserve to live, I know you know that.”

Dean shook with anger and grief. Was he like this once? He was, and Seth knew he was, and still wanted him.

“I never realized how fucking stupid hunters look until I stopped being one. What do you got in all those fucking pouches, AJ?”

AJ holstered his gun and swung at Dean, clocking him in the cheekbone, and Dean countered with a kick to his abdomen. But AJ was a fast son of a bitch, and got Dean by the arm, twisting it behind his back.

“Take me inside, Dean.”

Dean struggled in the hold but AJ shoved him forward.

They walked out of the woods and into the clearing around the cabin. Dean stumbled but AJ pulled him back up by his arm, Dean’s shoulder screaming.

“Quiet, now,” AJ said. But just as they approached the cabin, Dean heard the sound of something moving through the air and AJ let go of him, screaming.

Dean whipped around to see a seven-foot tall, snarling wolfman knock AJ Styles to the ground and take a swipe at him with his claws. AJ tried to reach for a gun but the werewolf, Seth, Seth knocked it away like it was made of plastic.

Seth pinned the hunter to the ground. “How many more?” he snarled. “Who knows?”

AJ spat in his face, and Seth roared. Dean trembled, his body having a hard time understanding where safety and danger really were anymore.

“Who knows you’re here, AJ!” Seth demanded, enunciating carefully around his wicked fangs.

“Everyone,” AJ said, grinning with evil as he struggled against Seth’s grip. “I told them all.”

With a mighty wrench, he got an arm free of Seth and went for his holster. Seth let go to swipe at him with his claws. But this let AJ get free and he drew his weapon.

“No!” Dean screamed, but as AJ fired, he only hit air. With superhuman speed, Seth dodged out of the way, rolled to his feet, and leapt at the hunter from the other side. They collided, and Seth tore into AJ’s neck with his teeth. Blood sprayed from the wound and AJ collapsed, clutching at himself, but within seconds, he stopped moving, his body cooling dead on the ground.

Seth dropped to his knees, sickened, and touched his forehead to the ground. When he rose, his face was human again but still streaked with the hunter’s blood. He gagged and threw up on the ground.

Dean shook himself out of his daze and approached. “Hey kid, it’s okay.”

“I’ve never killed anyone before. I’ve been in fights, sure, but…” He shook all over.

“You saved my life, Seth, you saved both our lives. You did what you had to do. He’s a scumbag, he was the worst kind of monster.” Dean stroked Seth’s head and neck, and pulled him close. He wiped at the blood with the sleeve of his shirt. “That used to be me.”

“That’s not you anymore,” Seth said fiercely.

Dean was silent. He held Seth tightly, took solace in the other man’s warmth.

After a moment, Seth broke the silence. “If he doesn’t come back...do you think his friends will come looking for him?” he asked.

“I bet they already are,” Dean said.

They dragged the body into the trees. He looked like he was mauled by a wild animal; hopefully that would be cover enough if and when anyone found him.

Seth shivered and Dean took him inside to warm up, to get fresh clothes, to clean the blood off. To eat. They didn’t say much. They were finding that they didn’t have to.

***

“It’s time,” Dean said. “Don’t want to be here when Bullet Club shows up.”

Seth nodded.

“We’ll have to get you some boots or something in town.”

“I’m better barefoot in the woods than most people,” Seth replied.

Dean changed too, into more rugged gear, putting on layers for warmth just in case. He found a coat for Seth too, and hats for both of them. He stuffed things in a duffel bag.

“What can I do?” Seth asked.

“Tell me a story,” Dean said.

Seth sank into the couch and picked up the edge of the blanket, picking at the edge. “Um. Okay. A long time ago rabbits ruled the earth.”

“Some story,” Dean said, raising his eyebrows.

“You asked,” Seth huffed.

“No, go on,” Dean said.

“They were strong and awesome and nothing could touch them, but there were so many of them that the sun god said to the prince of the rabbits, oh, and the prince’s name was El-Ahrairah, the sun said he had to get his people under control. But the prince said, no, dude, we’re too awesome, we’re going to rule everything.”

Dean rifled through the cupboards looking for something, but he listened.

“So the sun said, fine, I will find some ways to control them. So he rounded up all the other animals and gave them gifts—he gave the wolves sharp teeth and the cats claws and the hawks talons, and along with that he gave them the desire deep within them to hunt El-Ahrairah and his people.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dean said.

“I know,” Seth replied. “Harsh. But he gave every animal a gift, including the rabbits. But when Frith, that’s the sun god’s name, came looking for the prince of the rabbits, El-Ahrairah ran and hid, and stuck his head in his burrow.”

Dean laughed. He opened a coffee can for the cupboard, pulled out a wad of cash, and stuck the money in his pocket.

“So the sun’s like, ‘Prince, come here, I want to give you a gift.’ And the prince is like, ‘Dude, you sicced every animal in the world on me, you can kiss my ass.’ And the sun’s like, ‘Cool.’ So he blesses his ass!”

Now Dean was really laughing. He put a bunch of MREs from a bottom cupboard in a bag.

“So Frith blessed El-Ahrairah’s tail and it became bright white and shining. He blessed his back legs so they grew really long and powerful and strong for speed. And the prince took off running. The sun said to him,” and now Seth closed his eyes like he was remembering something he had memorized or just remembered fondly, “All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies. And whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first, they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, Prince With a Swift Warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.”

Seth opened his eyes. Dean had stopped and was just listening. “That was a good story,” Dean said.

“Just always related to that part,” Seth said, now quiet.

“I think I’ve got everything we need to get the hell out of here,” Dean said. “Except the blue blanket. Can’t leave that behind.”

Seth grabbed it off the bed while Dean shut windows and fastened locks and turned things off and put things down. Dean grabbed a couple of things off the gun rack. There were a few boxes of ammo in one of the bags.

“One more thing,” Dean said. He grabbed the long stick he had been whittling and handed it to Seth. “Walking stick. I made it, thought it might help your knee.”

Seth turned it over in his hands. It was made from a branch that was crooked at the top and the end hand been crudely carved into what might have been a wolf.

Seth just looked up at Dean with wonder. “Why?”

“Why not?” Dean shrugged.

Laden, they shut the cabin door. Dean locked it and then stashed the key in the dirt at the corner of the front wall.

“The Jeep’s about a mile east of here,” Dean said, and walked off toward the trees. Seth took one last look at Dean’s bolt-hole and followed.

They walked mostly in silence. Dean cut a quick pace and Seth did his best to keep up. His shifting was under control but his knee still ached.

Eventually, they reached the Jeep, hidden under a tarp and canopy of fake leaves. Dean uncovered it and then unlocked it. They put their bags and gear in the back.

Dean handed a rifle to Seth. “Know how to use this?”

“Never had much need, but yeah.”

Dean nodded and patted him on the arm. They both got in. Dean blew a kiss upward toward the heavens and then tried to start the car. After a heart-clenching second, the engine turned over and the car roared to life.

Dean put it in gear and headed off in a direction he knew by heart. Seth watched the trees whip by the windows outside.

Finally, they reached a dirt road, and then a paved one, and then, finally, a highway. They pulled out onto it and saw the moon hanging low in sky, looking fat and heavy.

“Is that full?” Dean asked.

“Not yet,” Seth said.

“Where will you run on the full moon?” Dean said.

“I’m running now, aren’t I?” Seth answered. They were silent all the way to La Grande.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, spoileriffic warnings:
> 
> Seth has a grisly bullet wound that Dean performs field surgery on.
> 
> Randy is a werewolf and Seth's adoptive, abusive brother, and was killed by Dean at some point in the past. Dean thinks Roman was killed in revenge for that and is assuming Roman is dead, but he was actually turned into a werewolf and is working for The Authority.
> 
> AJ Styles is a hunter who turns up, tries to kill both Seth and Dean while being a homophobic/shifter hating shithead, and Seth rips his throat out. But Dean and Seth both escape.
> 
> I wish no ill on anyone I killed off in this story! 
> 
> This is very heavily inspired by Teen Wolf, but also World of Darkness tbh.
> 
> The last bit of the story of El-Ahrairah is a direct quote from Watership Down, which is the book Seth is referencing/re-telling--I tried to make it clear in context that Seth was quoting something.
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading!


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